Ravenbound
Live Developer Q&A - 15th June 2023
Come hang out with us as we talk about where we'll be talking about what's next for Ravenbound.
đď¸ Guests: Simon (Lead Designer) and Andreas (Executive Producer).
đ The event will happen on Thursday, 15th June 15:00 CET!
Drop any and all questions related to the patch, game mechanics, the industry, or our guests in the replies or in the #questions channel!
We hope to see you on Discord!
Dev Q&A 6: Summary & Highlights
Do join us on Discord if you have any questions youâd like answered or want notifications for future events!
If you'd like to listen to the full recording instead, check it out here.
Are there any plans to add a Photo Mode?
Simon: We donât have plans for a Photo Mode, but it depends on what the community wants. If thereâs a big demand for it, we would consider adding it.
It has been talked about before, and at one point we even had someone working on it, but we had to tackle more pressing matters in the game, so itâs on hold for now.
Andreas: Itâs not a high enough priority for us to work on it right now. There are more important things we should focus on, like the changes brought in with patch 1.0.4, for example. These were much more important.
In a future patch, weâll cover a lot of fun additions, but the Photo Mode is not critical to the gameplay or the overall gameplay loop. Thatâs why we havenât prioritized it.
We do agree that the game looks really beautiful, so it would be really nice to add a Photo Mode. Itâs nice to just be able to take screenshots. But thereâs a cost to it, and the priority isnât high enough at this moment.
Simon: Certain games have really stepped up to include their own versions of a Photo Mode, but there are different levels of this. Maybe if enough people want it but thereâs still a low priority, we could do something small at first, like disabling the UI. It wouldnât have a lot of fancy features - it could come in many forms.
Will there eventually be Warden defeat or Obliterated rewards?
Simon: Absolutely! At this time, we donât have anything planned for a specific time or patch, but we have talked about it, and we definitely want it.
Ideally, you consider the Warden as part of your journey. Maybe you choose a specific Warden because you found an item that will work really well with the reward, so this creates a really interesting design space for us to add to and expand on.
Andreas: It fits thematically as well in the progression of the game when choosing which boss to go for next. We are looking into those mechanics already to see what fits.
How are you feeling about update 1.0.4 so far?
Andreas: Iâm very happy with it from the Producerâs perspective. Weâve seen the type of feedback weâre getting from 1.0.4, which is pointing us in the right direction. It wasnât the biggest patch weâve ever made, but what we added - Vessel Select, for example - is an important indicator for us that weâre doing the right things. The feedback has been positive, so Iâm very happy with it.
Simon: Iâm super happy with it. Watching PixelRickâs speedruns and breaking record after record was very engaging to watch. Watching the videos theyâve uploaded onto YouTube has been really encouraging.
There have been several people posting really encouraging feedback about Vessel Select. We had received a lot of feedback from everyone who was really frustrated with how things were and worked on those areas to improve.
Have there been any unexpected outcomes from any of the new systems introduced - the new Cards in particular?
Simon: We found an unexpected bug with one of the Cards where if you played Destined Fortune, it broke your cycle of Cards and reset the amount of Cards youâve played in the Vessel Screen. If you then played Inner Growth, which allows you to draw Cards equal to the number of Cards youâve played in this visit to the Vessel Screen, you wouldnât draw any extra Cards.
For the most part, Minor Pandemonium seems to be working correctly, but in certain situations, it could drain a Card that has the same Mana as Minor Pandemonium, meaning your Mana doesnât change. At the moment, thereâs no clear celebration to show what Card is drained, so you donât necessarily see it, making the Card seem bugged.
We also learned with Minor Pandemonium, people didnât expect their Folk bonus to trigger. We tried to word Minor Pandemonium to ensure it included the keyword âdrainâ, so then the Folk bonus adds an extra bonus when you drain a Card.
Since you have never experienced the game without the Folk bonus, it makes it feel as if your Folk bonus is giving you the ability to drain a Card and reads weirdly as a result, making you feel that when you drain a Card, you should get this effect.
We need to make it clearer or avoid Cards that do things in this way. Minor Pandemonium is fun, but that was an unexpected hurdle that taught us to be more careful in future with similar Cards.
Andreas: With the number of Cards that we now have in the game, we can have a sense of emergent gameplay just with how you can combine them and how they synergize, but we wonât figure that out until we release them!
It could be that youâre able to break the game, which wouldnât be balanced! Itâs a constant process to keep it roughly balanced while making sure thereâs that emergent feeling that youâre discovering a new, cool combination of mechanics and Cards.
Simon: We had an internal playtest recently where we tested some of the upcoming Cards, and we found three different unexpected things that happened with the Cards. Itâs fun because we want that unexpected synergy.
In an ideal case, we make sure that the Cards work properly with all the common synergies, but not knowing about all of them is a good place to be. We want everyone to be on the journey of figuring out all the possible combinations and synergies that the game can have.
The sort of balance that we want to go for is a challenging experience that you can master. If you become really good, then you can make anything work on the base difficulty. Youâre not beholden to any luck. Thatâs all part of the experience, that you run into a perfect Card roll that makes you unstoppable.
This is something that weâre always tweaking, so thereâs always going to be this constant back and forth in balancing the Cards. There should be instances where you donât necessarily need to have that mechanical skill on the base difficulty, that youâre lucky and get the Cards going. Thatâs ongoing work, trying to strike a balance between mastery and luck, and how they interact.
How do we decide which features or bugs to prioritise for patches?
Andreas: It varies from patch to patch. With bugs, there is a severity and priority when it comes to handling them. For example, if the game is crashing, thatâs a high severity and high priority, and we want to solve those kinds of issues quickly.
Bugs that would be considered low priority would be along the lines of a texture not looking as nice as it should. The game works, but it could look nicer, so it doesnât have a high priority.
We do a âbug-triageâ, where we go through bugs in the backlog and decide on which should be higher or lower priority, and which path we should take.
Itâs more difficult for features. It depends on how much time it will take to complete, test and verify a feature. There are a lot of steps to create big features. In general, we would have a high-level idea of where we will improve the game.
Designers and directors decide what the best features are and whatâs best for the game in the coming period. They look into how they want to improve the game while maintaining the balance, along with determining the cost; time and effort required. Itâs a hard balancing act to do.
Features are tricky, but itâs very important that we start by working out what we should do first, coming from the perspective of the people who know what makes good gameplay.
Simon: Itâs all connected in the sense that you might have something thatâs important, but it only reaches a couple of team members. It could be something that you have to sit on for a while to properly test them, and work out how it changes the game over a longer period of time. It might be a high priority, but itâs going to take time to work on.
Itâs a bit of a puzzle to work out who works on what and how it all interacts. Itâs complicated to try and see all the moving pieces; something might be added into a patch that feels like less of a priority compared to something much bigger which everyone wants.
Andreas: Some of what weâve added into the game through patches have been ideas that we wanted to try. The Hatred system, for example, was something that we added in as an idea. Then we did a new take on it, and we talked about it to see if we were happy with it.
We offer some things that are a work in progress, knowing that we might change them in a future patch because we want your feedback. We want that kind of relationship where we can learn from you.
Are there any plans to add more World Bosses, potentially ones that drop guaranteed rare Cards or other rewards?
Simon: We donât have any plans for a wandering boss that drops guaranteed rare items right now. Weâre very interested in new challenges and new bosses, and we donât want them to be like Wardens where youâre obligated to engage with them.
Itâs part of the open-world style - we want optional things with a risk/reward aspect. Is this fight worth it for me, given my current build? We have two open-world bosses now, and I think the game could work well with more of them, so you maybe engage with some, but not others. Right now, itâs not our highest priority, but we are working on more Progression features.
Are there any details on what weâre planning to add to the game to encourage exploration?
Simon: Potted Riches was one of those things that we added to test the waters a bit. We wanted to see how people would react to this sort of change. As soon as you start adding exploration rewards, you could change the game so that the optimal path of the game is to spend a lot of time looking for these things.
We want to make sure that the game doesnât become a long checklist of looking for things. We want you to be able to play fast; it shouldnât feel like a suboptimal way to play. In an ideal world, thereâs value to both. The balance that we wanted to strike with Potted Riches was that it had a place in the meta, but is optional so you donât feel like you have to hunt for it.
If you want to play fast and beeline to the next part, you can use the open-world aspect as having the option to choose your next encounter and adjust your build direction. Thatâs the foundation of the open-world aspect of Ravenbound.
We want there to be a choice when getting Cards. You can get a Card and decide that itâs not for you because youâre exploring and want to take it slow. You want to engage in that exploration.
We added Potted Riches as a test for that, to see how people react to that concept. That said, we are planning to add more things to the world, especially between camps and towers to allow you to take a Raven form. We want to strike a balance - we donât want the optimal playstyle to be to look for rewards.
If we did, weâd be telling people to scavenge the entire world. That would work fine if this was not a roguelike where youâre going to play over and over again. We want it to be more fast-paced, you shouldnât feel that you have to engage with the entire world.
Every run, you engage with different parts of the world to different extents, so weâre planning to add rewards that you can find, that need to be unlocked. Unlike chests that are locked by Hatred, these are unlocked by a new resource. Every run, youâd have a set amount of this resource to engage with these other rewards that you find.
You can choose to use them all early if youâre having problems with the first boss, or you can hold onto them. We want them to have meaning, so it doesn't become a checklist of jumping in and using all your resources before you start playing the game.
It should offer the option if you need a power boost early on, but if you want to optimise it, then you engage with it over time. Itâs tricky to find that balance, and itâs something that weâre going to continue monitoring.
We definitely want to add to our exploration in a way where it doesnât become optimal to play in very long runs.
Andreas: Itâs almost as if we shouldnât use the word exploration - we want to enrich the world. We want to make the world more engaging, but not so much that itâs necessary to fly around the entire world.
Are there any plans to implement a âGod-modeâ for those of us who want to play, but are terrible at roguelikes?
Andreas: It kind of goes against what a roguelike is. There is a possibility to make it easier, for example, and the progression we mentioned earlier is a way to approach that. If youâre not great at roguelikes, there could be a progression system that could reward you.
You have a couple of runs under your belt and level up your progression as a way to feel like youâre making progress. But right now, we have no plans to add in a God-Mode.
Simon: We are currently adjusting the difficulty - not necessarily like we did after launch where we adjusted the difficulty by nerfing enemies. In our second patch, we nerfed a lot of enemies, but itâs a little different now.
We have certain periods in a run that are a bit more difficult than we want them to be on the base difficulty mode. Now, instead of directly nerfing them, weâre adding ways for you to become more powerful.
For example, the Cards added in 1.0.4 add quite a bit of power to players. You can get a ton more Mana now than you could before. Now, when you start finding rare and legendary bounties, youâre going to be able to have a much greater time than you did before, especially with the Inner Growth Card. Being able to draw more Cards is very beneficial.
Instead of directly adjusting the difficulty of some of the later enemies and bosses, we are trying to give you more power, and thatâs an ongoing change.
At some point, weâre going to want to look at our difficulty modes. At this time, we have three modes, and the base one is the most balanced. We want to spend a bit more time making sure that all of them can be as engaging as they can be.
Depending on what the community is asking, we might spend more time giving you finer settings for these difficulties, but we donât have a God-Mode planned right now.
Thank you all so much for attending and/or reading the Q&As. Patch 1.0.4 is now live, so weâre excited to know your thoughts about the new features and tweaks weâve made to Ravenbound. Make sure to join the Discord server if youâd like to participate in the live Q&A sessions.
Dev Q&A 5: Summary & Highlights
Do join us on Discord if you have any questions youâd like answered or if you want notifications for future events!
If you'd like to listen to the full recording instead, check it out here.
What are the main changes that we're bringing in for Patch 1.0.4?
Simon: We're looking at some of the feedback regarding things posted in the text channel here, like rerolling characters and making sure that you get to play the Vessel you want to play. That has been a big thing that people have asked about, and it's the main thing coming in 1.0.4.
Once that's rolled out, you should be able to pick whatever Folk you have unlocked for your character, and you can pick whatever weapon Traits you'll unlock for your character, and whatever unique Traits you want, so you can compose whatever character you want from the available options you have.
You won't have to worry about needing to reroll your character if you don't like an unlocked Trait. You can decide in the Vessel Select what you want to play.
Sometimes when I jump in, I just want to see what I get, so there should be an option for people like me who want something random. You can do that as well; you can just press a button and get a random collection of all the core Traits and weapons.
On top of that, you can also randomise the visuals amongst the set we have. You can pick the specific colour or the specific antlers, or you can randomise between the existing options.
That's going to be quite a big thing for anyone who has a strategy that they want to test that requires certain Traits. Hopefully, they'll be quite excited about this, as you'll spend a lot less time rerolling.
How did we arrive at the decision to change Vessel Select? Was it mainly community feedback, or internal feedback or was it a combination of both?
Simon: I would say that it's a combination. A lot of us on the team would just randomly roll characters to play unless we needed to debug or test something specifically to see if it was working.
Even though we've talked about it internally, it was clearly an issue when people started playing and discovering. I saw someone commenting that they were out of Legacy, so they just flew out and ended the run over and over again. Reading that made me realise that we need to help so that people don't have to do this.
The time spent in the game should be playing the game and having fun with it. We've talked about it before, but seeing the community's reaction, it becomes a no-brainer that we need to make sure that that's a better experience for everyone.
Steacy: That was something that was requested by the community a lot. It's a nice touch to be able to play the way you want with your Vessel each run, and for the people who want the pure Vessel experience, you can still randomise.
Simon: Depending on what people want more of, such as rewards for randomising, that's something we can look into. Right now you get to choose. There's nothing pulling you to either.
One thing that weâve seen in both the community and the team is that when we talk about what difficulty we're playing the game at or how far into the game we are, it can become a little bit muddy. So we're actually changing how we talk about difficulty.
When you're in the Vessel Selection screen, changing difficulty is now going to look a little bit different. Difficulties have their own names like Normal, Hard and Nightmare. It's a very small change, but hopefully, it makes it easier to talk about the difficulties without thinking that someone is talking about how far into the run they are.
We're changing the name and the framing of it. Normal is the most balanced for experience, while Nightmare is super punishing and challenging. So don't feel bad if you don't play on Nightmare. It's hard enough.
What else will we be seeing in 1.0.4?
Simon: There are some new Cards coming - five Cards to be specific. Potentially, if you're lucky, you could find a way to utilise these Cards to get a build going faster.
The one I'm most excited about is Inner Growth. It's a new Bounty Card where when you play it, you get to draw as many Cards as you played during that visit to the Hand Screen. So, letâs say you open up your Hand Screen and play three Cards. Then you play Inner Growth, and you get to draw three Cards again. That can really help you get going fast and maybe then you can risk not farming as much, which is quite interesting.
Weâve also introduced some fun Cards, a direction weâre excited about going towards. We want to make sure that our Bounty Cards feel good to play, and have mechanics like reducing the cost of other Cards in your hand. Maybe it drains a random Card in your hand, but you get the mana cost of that Card.
These new Cards are interacting with a different part of the world and game that maybe we didn't touch with Cards before. Is that a direction that the team is looking to go toward? Can we expect to see more Cards interacting with even more systems and features in the future?
Simon: We are really excited about this kind of direction - this is just the start. Now we want to see how the community feels about that direction. That will be what we base future Cards on.
Steacy: This is something that we feel answers something in the community. Weâre super excited to put it out there, but we also want players to give feedback on it. If itâs popular, then weâll definitely add more.
How do we evaluate if they're successful and if theyâre going to hit the mark that we were looking for with them?
Steacy: This is something we work with a lot of teams on, to make sure that we get the balance right. Our community feedback is super important to us - that gives us a lot of information about what feels right, and what feels fun.
This gives us a lot of clues on where to look, because another thing that we do is use balancing data. How are players playing the Cards? Is that what we expected, and does it look balanced? If itâs not what we expected, is it still fun, or is it messy?
Sometimes someone will say that itâs not fun for them, and we can go and confirm that itâs not balancing the way we expect. But even before we put it out there, we do a lot of internal playtesting. We utilise everyone on the team to just play and see, âDoes this feel good? Is it fun? Can we make a nice deck?â and make sure that they can be used strategically.
Itâs nice when you can plan the order of the Cards in a way thatâs going to make the playthrough the most exciting.
Simon: The balance of our Cards is a very common discussion, and how we feel about it can be quite tricky. The data helps us find threats that we can investigate. For example, we can see if a Trait is not performing and work out why - maybe itâs not the Trait itself, but rather thereâs not enough builds to work with, so i thereâs no incentive to pick it.
Is this the reason for the Blaze Brand Card, which gives you Frenzy when nearby enemies are burning?
Simon: We want to make sure that there are more Relics that interact with different status effects. Weâre excited about going in this direction, and moving more status effect power into Relic Cards, this to move more status effect power into relics, because right now you can get locked into getting a specific weapon in order for the build to work. Itâs not a trigger effect, more like a boost that allows you to become more powerful for it.
However, something weâve identified is that weâre also lacking Relics that interact with Frenzied in a fun way.
We want to add more things to boost status effects connected to your defensive mechanics. If you perform a perfect dodge then you become Frenzied and we have some Traits that interact with that. We want to expand that a bit to allow you that moment when youâre Frenzied, which would then boost a Relic that would make you Frenzied whenever you have Grey Health, for example, and the same with Perfect Guard when you become invulnerable.
In future, we want to look into boosting that kind of status on yourself so that there are more opportunities to build around it. Right now you can build around your Guard, and make use of the invulnerability, but we want to make sure that thereâs an opportunity to go, âIâm mainly guarding for the invulnerability and thatâs the main trigger for my Relicsâ.
This is a sneak peek in one of the directions that we want to go with for Cards. We want more fun Cards and ones that interact in fun ways with status effects to create more varied builds.
Is there anything else youâd like to point out about in this patch?
Steacy: There are a lot of bug fixes going into this patch, especially in audio. Weâve got some fixes for the tutorial as well. As always, weâre introducing new crash fixes, so weâre hoping that this will make the gameplay even smoother for everyone!
Simon: In our last patch, we introduced new Hatred Cards, so Hatred is attacking you in a much more varied way. Itâs not just that enemies get stronger; you can lose coins or Mana. One thing that we changed in that patch was that instead of every enemy getting a 5% increase to their damage and health, they would get an increase between 2-4% based on your Hatred level.
Itâs weak on individual enemies because if you bolster the health of a stronger enemy, itâs noticeable, but on weaker enemies, itâs not as noticeable. Weâve tweaked it so that itâs more about the perception of 4% rather than the actual 4%.
With that change, we actually lost some damage for enemies. They would get the health increase based on your Hatred level, but the damage increase hasnât worked as intended. Weâre now fixing that bug so that damage is tied to Hatred level, and weâll see how it feels. If it feels that your Hatred level is suddenly really, really punishing and not fun to engage with, please let us know. We will really try to monitor this closely.
Where can you find the Meditation and Inner Growth Cards?
Simon:I think that Meditation is Rare, and Inner Growth is Legendary. So for Inner Growth, youâll definitely want to pick up those Legendary golden chests to have the highest chance of getting them. Meditation is one that youâre going to see without necessarily farming the most valuable chests.
What kind of tools, techniques and workflows went into creating the world of Ravenbound?
Simon: We donât have the world designer here that was responsible for it, but I can go into a bit of detail. First thing is that we create everything in the Apex Engine, as we have an editor for Apex that allows us to create very large worlds.
One of the huge benefits of this engine is that I can build on one end of the island, and then fly over to the other end of the island in seconds and continue my work over there. If I put some crates down, I can press one button and go in-game in a second, then I can run around and test it.
Tools make your overworld development a lot easier if theyâre made for open-world development. In this case, Apex helps us a ton. Thatâs the technical side from a non-technical point of view. We can talk about how we handle that big of a world, But weâd need the more code-savvy people to explain how we make the Apex engine really shine.
Approaching it from the design perspective, you can find a lot about level design on YouTube, but there arenât that many articles on world design in particular. In my experience, it can be a bit harder - but in reality, itâs a lot of the same. Itâs scaled up, but you treat the entire world as a level.
The camps and other parts of the world are very different. Theyâre like props in a level with opportunities and moments. Depending on the open world, you would think of mountains as âT-intersectionsâ - you can probably find a YouTube video with someone talking about how you use T-intersections from a level-design perspective to really create these environmental storytelling moments.
An example would be to put up a poster about a carnival in the T-intersection, and thatâs a great way to tell people about the world without them thinking about it. Maybe they donât even stop and look at the poster, they just walk past it, but theyâll learn about it.
Itâs the same thing here. We place a cool dragon skull on a mountain, like youâve seen in other open world games, and treat the mountain as a T-intersection. Itâs the same thing, just on a much larger scale.
Steacy: Something thatâs always important is that you lay out your rules - we call them pillars. When you have a collection of rules for your world and know what your world is like, that enables your work. Especially if youâre in a larger team as well. If youâre multiple people, you need to be able to build up that world in a way that feels cohesive for the players.
Something weâve really tried to do with Ravenbound is make sure that you really feel like youâre being dropped into a world of Scandinavian folklore. We want to make sure that it feels cool and melancholy in all those pieces.
A less cool thing for the engine is: donât forget your documentation! Think through it first about what this world is, and then find all the cool tools to build it.
Since the second Card drawn is either Mana or Gold, will the new Cards like Inner Growth and Meditation occupy the same space?
Simon: We really tried to reserve the centre space in chests for Mana or Gold, so I would be surprised if they can appear there. I will make sure and confirm, but the center Card should be safe!
Hey, we'll definitely find out when we start playing those runs in the new patch.
Simon: And I would say, when you play the game, if you get like a spark of inspiration, and you think âthis card should existâ, but it doesn't exist, please share your ideas with us! We read so much in the Discord or Steam forums. We really appreciate all your feedback and ideas.
Steacy: We're really excited about the upcoming patch and we hope you are too. We're looking forward to talking to you more post-patch and seeing what you think!
Thank you all so much for attending and/or reading the Q&As. Patch 1.0.4 is now live, so weâre excited to know your thoughts about the new features and tweaks weâve made to Ravenbound. Make sure to join the Discord server if youâd like to participate in the live Q&A sessions.
Patch 1.0.4 is now live!
Greetings Vessels,
Weâre delighted to bring you another game update focused on feedback from the Community! Todayâs update is a relatively small one in terms of the number of changes, but it focuses on key areas of the player experience we believe are extremely impactful. In combination with the changes to Traversal and Hatred introduced in Patch 1.0.3, this gives us a fantastic footing to continue adding new content to Ravenbound.
Our most notable changes are related to Vessel Select. Weâve had numerous requests from the community to allow players to manually select their Folk, Unique Trait, and Weapon Trait, instead of randomizing each time. While the variety between runs is an important aspect of our vision for Ravenbound, we believe that giving players a greater degree of control and choice is the correct path to follow.
Weâve also introduced 5 new cards. Some of them can be used to directly counteract the effects of certain Hatred cards introduced in Patch 1.0.3, giving even more ways to work around Hatred. For instance, Meditation will reduce the Mana Cost of the cards in your Hand by 2, while Minor Pandemonium allows for a random Card to be Drained, adding Mana equal to its Mana Cost to your pool of resources.
Vessel Select *
This is a feature we received a lot of requests for from the community, so weâre delighted to introduce it in this update!
The Vessel Carousel has been removed and replaced with an updated Vessel Select screen. Vessel Select allows you to manually select your Vesselâs Folk, Unique Trait, Weapon Trait and Difficulty. If you prefer to take your chances with Lady Luck, you will still find the option available to randomize your Vessel. You can also choose to randomize just the appearance of your Vessel. As part of these changes, all Legacy costs from Vessel Select have been removed.
This, of course, brings up the question about other ways Legacy can be spent in game. Itâs something weâre discussing and hope to address in future updates.
In the new Vessel Select screen, you will now be able to cycle through each customizable option, such as Folk, Weapons, Traits and even Difficulty options â Weâve renamed these options to Normal, Hard and Nightmare to make it easier to identify them during discussions. Zoom in/out, and rotation options are also included so you can get a good look at your Vessel.
Do note that you will only be able to select from options that have already been unlocked in your runs.
New Cards
We received feedback about adding more creative options in the Card pool available to you in Ravenbound. Our goal is to make the strategy layer for your character building richer and more meaningful using cards.
These new cards are designed to push that variety, and should make the strategy as a whole more exciting as they start to encompass new ways to interact with the world.
Minor Pandemonium, Inner Growth, and Meditation represent a direction weâre very excited to head towards with cards.
Icons for the new cards
Potted Riches
Somewhere in the current Region, a Golden Pot filled with 200 Coins appears
Minor Pandemonium
Drain a random Card in your Hand, gain Mana equal to its Mana Cost
Inner Growth
Draw a Card for each Card played during this visit to the Vessel screen
Blaze Brand
While a nearby Enemy is Burning you are Frenzied
Meditation
Reduce the Mana Cost of each Card in your Hand by 2
Bug Fixes
This patch sees a big wave of notable bug fixes across the board, ranging from fixing Card effects to audio issues with heavy attacks in the water.
We really appreciate your diligence and dedication to reporting bugs, so please keep us informed with your reports in the Ravenbound Discord, so we can continue to make Ravenbound the best it can be!
Tutorial
- Fixed a bug where Tooltips could only be activated once
Cards
- Fixed a bug where the Main Objective didnât update after the Bounty Card Tutorial
Hatred
- Resolved a bug where the Hatred Level did not impact the Damage dealt by enemies*
Gameplay
- Resolved a bug where looting a Hatred Card from a chest could result in the player encountering a crash*
- Resolved a bug where pots would not be destroyed when hit by a jump-attack AOE
UI
- Resolved an issue where pressing right when drawing a Hatred Card would not highlight the next card*
Audio
- Resolved an issue where draining a card would result in an audio event being played when it shouldnât*
- Fixed an issue where no water AOE effect audio events would play when the player does heavy attacks in water
- Increased volume of Runic Guard Recharged to make it more noticeable*
- Improved management of sound controllers to address a bug that prevented audio from working during gameplay sessions*
Misc
- Resolved a bug where clearing a Camp did not trigger the âCamp Conqueredâ message*
- Fixed a bug where the Name and Description of a Card would overlap
- Resolved a bug where the German text would appear shortened in the life-ending screen
*This indicates bugs that were directly reported by the community
As always, thank you all for your continued support, and do let us know what you think of the changes introduced in this update.
If you have any questions or comments, drop them in the replies. There's also the option to come and join us for the weekly Developer Q&As on Discord and chat with us live. Weâd love for you to come and hang out with us!
See you in Ăvalt.
Dev Q&A 4: Summary & Highlights
In the fourth edition of the Ravenbound Q&A, we welcomed CM Althalus, Jonas (Lead Animator), Trevor (Senior Sound Designer) and Simon (Lead Designer).
Do join us on Discord if you have any questions youâd like answered or if you want notifications for future events!
If you'd like to listen to the full recording instead, check it out here.
In terms of strategy, what would you say is your favourite approach to Ravenbound?
Trevor: For me, it's anything related to the twin axes. I love the card Breath of the Inferno because it's got twin axes and it sets them on fire. Iâm a very simple player when it comes to the game, I just want to hit things and see big damage numbers and I don't really complicate it much more than that.
Jonas: If I had to pick my favorite strategy it would be Focus. I like the trait called Calculating, where your surge deals 300% more damage. I did that and was quite successful with it. I'm also a fan of activating Surge just as you pull off a charged attack. It feels good, especially with a two-handed sword combined with crit. You charge it and activate it as you slide towards the enemy and then, bam! Big fat crit.
Simon: I love the Spin to Win dual sword. That was super fun, but my most favourite is anything with the Parrier trait. It feels super rewarding when you pull off successful runs with it. There's something nice about applying Curse on a perfect guard, I like getting some status effects in there for some flash and spectacle that are paired with the Parrier trait.
Trevor: Spin to Win is such a timeless gameplay tactic in any game. It's amazing.
Every enemy in Ravenbound feels different, in huge part thanks to the animations and sounds. How do you collaborate between disciplines to make the enemies feel and sound great overall?
Jonas: The animation needs to be done first, and then comes the sound. So usually, I show some prototype animations to Trevor to see if itâs achievable within his schedule. Sometimes we can reuse sounds, so we don't really need to involve the sound team as much in the case animation might have more resources available.
But in Ravenbound, we have a unique challenge where most of the enemies are melee â although there are some magical enemies, but not many. In the future, Iâd like to add more magic-based enemies to provide a larger diversity of gameplay aspects. If you only have melee combat to work with, you can change the timings of those swings from one enemy to the other, like one enemy has a simple swing, whereas it's slower for the other enemy. You can also add a leap backward after the swing and that can also make it feel different, or a forward jump first, and then the swing. Since I also work with the combat design, if you tweak the threshold where the enemy gets staggered, that also has a major impact on how the enemy feels even though there are just swings. If you interrupt the enemy with a single slash, you're not going to be as intimidated by that enemy, compared to one that just ignores your hit, unless you do a big shield bash or something.
Trevor: Even though they're very different disciplines, I think audio and animation also share similarities, where it's all about timing. It's really important to figure out how to be in sync to share feedback back and forth. Things like, is this where this sound should be playing? There'll be times where Jonas will say, I think this should come in a little bit earlier. It's all because the audio has to be feedback for the gameplay moments.
It's really fun to develop a game where the combat can be quite chaotic, and there could be sounds playing all over the place and we try and figure out the really important sounds in those moments. From my perspective, I'm really lucky on this project to have this amazing looking world, and we have these really cool looking features that just provide instant inspiration when I'm trying to work on things.
So if there's a creature that comes in, it can be really easy to take inspiration from its visual design, and then Jonas has animations on top of that. It kind of adds in the movement set that can then influence how heavy or light the sound should feel. It's also really easy to draw inspiration from everyone on the team, because like we've mentioned before, we are a really small team. Even as a dev myself, pulling back and seeing the world that we've created and the content that's in there, I think it's really impressive what we've been able to put in there at this level, given how small the team is.
Jonas: When we review the game together, we might think, oh, this attack comes from behind because of the dive attack with the dual dagger. Then we realise that it needs a unique sound cue, because characters might be off screen, right? So you need that extra layer. That's definitely something we also try to emphasise with sound, and with animation.
Trevor: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's something that we'll just get better and better at doing as well. Because as we watch the community play the game, and as we get feedback about how players are finding things in combat, they might be saying, well, we didn't realise why I was getting hit, or we didn't understand where this attack was coming from. That's always feedback that we can take on and work to improve the tells on attacks or on different animations and different sounds.That's the really exciting thing about having the game out there in the world now, because we can see people playing it, and we can find ways where we can really dial in the combat experience in particular.
Are there any tools or techniques that you've used for Ravenbound that people might not expect?
Jonas: I always come back to motion capture. Other studios definitely do it as well, but not every studio will use it to the extent we use it. We use motion capture on pretty much everything in the game, and I also try to keep in shape, you know, in real life. Not that I'm super fit, but it helps when you swing a big sword or you need to jump as high as you can, it feels like an extra layer of motivation to go to the gym. Even though when I look at what I'm recording in the mocap studio, it can look absolutely ridiculous when I lie on the floor and pretend to fall, I'll be flailing my arms and legs about like I'm falling. But then you get a foundation of movement, you fix the poses to make it look like you're actually falling in in the air and not lying on the floor, and it works surprisingly well.
For this size of a team, there are a lot of animations in Ravenbound and to rely on something like keyframe, which is when you do everything by hand is like night and day. Without mocap, we could never have the amount of enemy variations with different weapons.
Trevor: The equivalent for audio would be field recording, or recording in general. With sound, you're really lucky because you could record anything. And then once you've processed it and applied all these different plugin effects, that can sound completely different to what the original recording was.
There's this big alarm that goes off every three months in Sweden, it's like an alarm system test. And that ended up being part of the sound that plays in the hatred beams. It sounds nothing like what the recording was, but it has this really cool, oppressive tone to it when you hear it and I ran that through a bunch of effect pedals and tweaked it to the point where it had that nice droning feel that the hatred lasers above the syphons have.
But I also like using voice, so when you go into a rift, there's this low droning ambience. I got the sound designer from The Angler to hum into a really high-resolution microphone. That allows us to really pitch down the sound, but still keeps the really nice detail of the recording, which you can't do with microphones that don't capture as much resolution. I ran that through a bunch of effects and put a lot of reverb on it and ran it through a synthesiser, and thatâs how it turned into that otherworldly ambience that plays when you go into a rift, and then it stops once you've cleared the rift. So using voice for things, as long as you can create a tone, you can run it through a bunch of different effects and process it in ways that sound really different. Sometimes it can really work, and sometimes it can just be horrible but it's always fun experimenting.
Are there any other hidden or less obvious animations or sounds you'd like to highlight?
Jonas: There are some attacks, like the dual sword, that I couldn't do in the mocap suit. But once you understand the process of, and the beats of the motion, and you learn how to record one session at a time and then splice them together, you can get quite interesting results like the dual sword primary charge attack, for example. I did one swing in the mocap suit, and then spliced them together, increased the timing of the swing, and then added the extra swings and spins. So for me as an animator, thereâs always a creative challenge. It's very fun when you combine keyframe and motion capture.
Trevor: I had the weirdest experience when I was working from home. I didn't really have any treated areas where I could record nice sounding things. So I stuck my head into a cardboard box, and recorded all these weird groaning vocal sounds, and that's what you hear on the hatred chests, as well. So it's all processed and everything, but putting my head into a box kind of gave it this weird boxy acoustic sound. That's always going to be the recording moment I remember, because my partner was just watching me like, what are you doing? But I think that's pretty general for audio people. They're quite weird.
For a more gameplay related question, do we have any plans to adjust character creation that we're able to talk about?
Simon: We've seen a lot of people's frustration with certain parts of this. We obviously want that to feel like itâs a fun screen where you get excited about upcoming runs. So weâre looking at making sure you can pick what you want on that screen. You're going to be able to randomise the appearance of your characters, it's not going to be fancy in the sense that you can select exactly how your character is going to look, but we're trying to make sure that you can pick what traits you want for your characters, and you don't have to spend your legacy randomising that.
Once we get that out, weâll see if people miss the random aspect and if we can, somehow, make a mix of both. But to start out with, we're just looking to make sure that people can play what they want to play.
Are there any particular parts of the world that you love?
Jonas: It's a difficult question, since the enemies are dear to my heart. I'm proud of how different the Haxa feels compared to the others. There's a different dimension to fighting her, She's very good at avoiding you.There's a noticeable difference in how you play against her, and I'd like to add more of that to Ravenbound. In terms of biome, since I like to focus charge, I usually go to the fire biome to pick up Focus related cards.
Trevor: I really like the forest biomes, both the normal forest and the dark forest. It's probably because I like hiking, and I did a lot of field recording, which ended up being one of the ambiences that play in those areas. We've got a lot of really cool tools where we can have different sounds for vegetation, wind and trees, and we can have different sounds on fields of grass compared to playing fields that don't have as much grass . I always find myself in the forest biomes when I'm testing things, and Iâll move the character near a little lake. It's me taking myself on a little virtual hike while I do work.
Simon: For me it's the southern parts of Ăvalt, where it's open landscapes and vistas. But like Trevor, the dark forest is probably my favourite on-ground environment, the ambience there is amazing.
Are there any enemies that you find challenging, even though you know how to beat them?
Jonas: Hulders are difficult because they have an unfortunate issue where they tend to walk out of the range of the battlefield. When that happens, it can be a run killer, especially because they have a hefty life pool. If you're unlucky, you can come across the Crown Mother, and it can take quite a while to beat it. You might also have small Hulders constantly attacking you while you try to kill the Crown Mother, and if you take just one misstep, itâs a game over. They can beat you even if you have full HP.
The reason this happens is that the Crown Mother has an attack where she jumps backwards. So when you fight her, the likelihood that she'll jump out of range is very high because she's only going backwards, and doesnât go forward when she attacks again.
We're discussing ways to resolve it, and I'd like to remedy the situation by giving her attacks that mix up going backwards and forwards. We could at least experiment with that, but as a long-term fix, I feel like we need to have clear points of interest in the camps so that when the AI is at a certain distance from the border, it wants to move back.
Is there anything else youâd like to mention about the game today?
Jonas: The animation I'm most proud of is something probably almost no one is aware of. When you fly upward as the Raven and you tap the fly slow button, it works as a stop animation. The transition between those states: fly, flap and fly slow - that animation was very, very hard to make feel right because a bird would never do it.
There was so much back and forth with how the bird angles to gather itself and then flap in a different manner. It was just very hard. Itâs probably an animation that players don't really see.
Trevor: It's really hard to talk about the audio in the game without talking about the music. Even though I didn't compose or write any of the music it was just such a pleasure working with both Elvira and Nicklas from Two Feathers.
Working with them has just been so special in creating that tone for the game world and all the different biomes. It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences; I don't think I'll ever work with anyone in that way again because it was really special to this project.
Hopefully, at some point, we can involve them a bit more with these types of projects, which would be really cool.
And thank you to the community, for being active in the Discord server and playing Ravenbound!
Simon: It's been a lot of fun reading discussions from different players. The experience you all are having with the game and your thoughts about it influence us a lot.
We bring up a lot of your feedback in discussions, and like youâve seen with the Hatred changes and will hopefully see when the changes to Vessel Selection come out, we definitely want to keep on improving the experience for everybody. Thank you all for being so active, everything you write is super valuable for us!
Thank you for attending and/or reading these sessions. Make sure to join the Discord server if youâd like to participate in the live sessions, and get notifications and teasers about future content!
Live developer Q&A - 25th May 2023
Come hang out with us as we talk about the next patch update!
đď¸ Guests: Steacy (Product Team), and more to be confirmed
đ The event will happen on Thursday, 25th May 15:00 CET!
Drop any and all questions related to the patch, game mechanics, the industry, or our guests in the replies or in the #questions channel!
We hope to see you on Discord!
Dev Q&A 3: Summary & Highlights
Do join us on Discord if you have any questions youâd like answered or if you want notifications for future events!
If you'd like to listen to the full recording instead, check it out here.
From a publishing standpoint, was there a reason the game was released as a full release instead of as early access?
Steacy
This question is something we've been discussing a lot amongst ourselves. I think it's one that's really relevant to the industry, especially the PC gaming industry.
First and foremost I think the Early Access format is great. It has its time and place, and there's a lot of good reasons to do it. But with Ravenbound, we wanted to release a complete experience for players that had the total feature set from day one - that was always our goal. That is what we wanted to provide to players, and we wanted to use the betas and demos beforehand to try to deliver that. Then we wanted to work really closely with the community from 1.0 onwards.
The reason this question comes up for us on this project, is that we really believed that the game was 1.0 ready. We also wanted to share it with the community and the players as soon as we could because our idea has always been to develop this new genre with the community by our side. We did use the beta and demo to try to test as extensively as possible.
PC testing can be really complex because of the many permutations of setups, so we wanted to have as many people as possible play to try to solve that. Our in-house QA testing and the beta and demo did show really promising results that made us feel more confident in the 1.0 experience, I think there's also an aspect where we really love the game, we think it's hella fun, and that can create some rose-coloured glasses, that ultimately made us feel that the game was more ready to be a 1.0 than it was.
That said, I still feel that we released with a full feature set that we can work from, and that is an advantage. We've learned so much from this, we're striving to improve how we test quality and performance. At the end of the day, we're a small team, so we feel really lucky to have the community's ongoing help with this and we are really, really excited to do it together from kind of the 1.0 onwards.
Is there a roadmap that can be shared with the community at this stage?
Steacy
We really, really, appreciate working on this with the community, we really appreciate everyone out there who's giving us feedback and playing the game, and we want to be very transparent and open with the community. And we are excited to talk about all the plans that we have. When the game was released and we started to get a lot of the feedback, we had to rethink some things. And we had to plan a bit differently to make sure that we could actually address many of the wishes and desires that are coming from our players. So we've been working really hard on this. And we do hope to be able to share more soon. I don't want to make any promises yet, but this is for sure a goal for us soon.
Are there any plans for Coop or Multiplayer in future?
Steacy
Yes, always a good question when you want to share a fun game with your friends. The total honest truth is that currently, we don't have any plans to add these as we are focused on maximising the quality and fun of our single player experience. And that has to be goal number one. Right now, we're really, really focused on getting that feedback and updating the game on the single player side.
There are some players who are struggling with the gameâs difficulty, but still really enjoy the world and the combat. Is there any chance of adding a sandbox mode, or alternate difficulty levels?
Tomas
Well, I don't know if I would call it a sandbox mode, the thing that we're looking at currently. We started the process with the updated hatred cards, which is a step in the direction of listening to that feedback. We're incredibly aware of it, we're looking at it and thinking and talking about it quite a bit.
And there are more designs and thoughts around the difficulty of the game that we're working on, and that we're planning to add to the game. I don't want to be super specific, because I don't think we've landed on the exact way we want to do it. Because we talked about this last time I did this Q&A, too - this kind of game is like a spider web, or a house of cards where everything is quite carefully balanced. So when we had the conversation about the reason for the hatred system, and so on how it's sort of the spine that holds a lot of this together for us. When we talk about changing difficulty, it ties into that balancing. So, absolutely, we want this experience to feel good and be available to the people that are currently struggling.
Steacy
And if I can just add on, Tomas, I think for us, it's really, really important that when we do things, we're doing them in the best possible way. Like, there's a lot of stuff we want to do. But we want to make sure that the House of Cards stays upright!
CM Althalus
Weâve talked a bit before in the previous q&a about how it can be quite complex to implement these kinds of changes, because they can have knock-on effects that you're not expecting. The great example was letting players change back to Raven form all the time. Sounds like a great idea. But it's not until you actually experiment with it a bit that you understand the impact it can have on, in this case, the feeling of scale in the world. I think like a few people have already mentioned in the chat, the hatred changes have made a big difference for the difficulty. Some of the players who were already quite good are clearing faster now, I think some of the other players who were struggling a bit are having a better time with it. So I think we're moving in the right direction there.
Tomas
Yeah, and I think the way those new cards work is a great example of where we didn't just rush into the problem and switch something off or change some numbers. Because what I like about the new cards is that they can be less punishing, or they can be not punishing at all. If a card removes your mana and you didn't have any mana, it doesn't even feel like it did anything, which is kind of a nice feeling. But there is also a lot of new strategy that we've seen crop up - intentionally from our side as well. But it's really fun to see people talking about holding on to some lower tier cards in case they get this hatred card that steals a card and so on.
CM Althalus
Hatred is obviously a key part of the concept of Ravenbound. Was it always called Hatred? And were there any other names or ideas for the evil power taking over the world?
Tomas
All right, this is gonna become a two hour Q&A now!
It wasn't always called Hatred, and it wasn't always the Hatred system. And it's come from two different directions. Way, way back it was called corruption and it worked in a very different way. I can't even remember all the names to be honest, but that's gone through many permutations, because the entire narrative went through many permutations, because the game itself went through a bunch of permutations.
So we were moving blocks around for quite a while. And I think hatred became a thing in the end, because we had previously seen in surveys that we had a kind of narrative that was quite complicated to get into. Because on the one hand we don't do lots of cutscenes or any VO. So it was all in text, and then we use a lot of Scandinavian style language which doesn't make it accessible to a lot of people. It was a little bit difficult to get into.
So one of the changes that we decided on was to just try and make it more clear, because I think when you're talking about a Roguelite, and the loop that you play, you don't want that to be too confounding. Really, I just want to jump in and go okay, big bad guy over here. These are the steps to get to the big bad guy. It's kind of good versus bad in that sense. And I think that's why we landed on Hatred too, to try and simplify the whole game in essence.
Steacy
I heard a name for it used to be meanie metre, confirm or deny.
Tomas
Hard deny, but I like it.
Are there any plans for modding in the future of Ravenbound?
Tomas
I will tread carefully here. We haven't had a modding conversation, as far as I'm aware, on this project, yet. I think the question is really interesting. And I will take it with me because we haven't really had a chance to talk about the modelling aspect of things.
I think it's a good question or discussion to have. There's precedent and history at Avalanche of modders coming in and doing cool things in our games. I think a big one is modders adding multiplayer to Just Cause 2 way back in the day, which was cool. That's actually before my time so I canât speak too much about it. I don't know yet what the answer is, but itâs definitely interesting.
Steacy
I just want to really agree with Tomas, and also say that, like, modding is magic.I think it's one of the coolest factors in games, but it is something that you need to structure your codebase to allow for. So it's something where we need to have the conversation. We can't just turn it on tomorrow.
What are some of the key things the team has learned from the launch of Ravenbound?
Steacy
We learned so much from launching Ravenbound, and you learn so much from every game launch - every game launch is completely its own unique thing. And you always, always learn a lot. And we've already been making a lot of improvements based on the learnings that we got. Weâre trying to change how we work, how we develop, how we integrate the community, into our development processes, all those things based on these learnings.
But I have two key learnings that were really important, I think. One is to make sure that we have time to use the amazing community feedback we get to improve the game. I think one thing for us is that we underestimated, post the second beta, how much time we would ideally want to get in all the improvements that we wanted, based on the feedback that we got. Because we want to be able to integrate all the great feedback we get from the community and make the best possible experience.
And the other key learning for us is that we have been thinking a lot about how we can seriously improve our quality assessment processes. This is about how we assess things like performance and stability, but also how we assess the more intangible things like the fun factor of a system, which is, in some ways, a lot harder than assessing things like performance and stability. So we're spending a lot of time on this as a team. And our goal is basically to be able to understand as soon as possible when we have issues so that we can solve them before they ever touch the players. What do you think, Tomas?
Tomas
I think creatively, there were some surprises in the way the community reacted to certain designs and certain decisions that were made where maybe we weren't expecting it both negative and positive. For instance, there's been a lot of feedback on the combat and, personally, I enjoyed the combat we had at launch. And I think it's the blindness of having played it so much that you get used to it to a degree that maybe you forget, then when it's in the hands of a new player who hasn't put hundreds of hours into it, they have a different experience. That was a great learning for us, I think - I don't want to single out combat specifically, but perhaps that was an area where we felt that we were in better shape.
Steacy
Yeah, combat was an area where we had a lot of confidence.
Tomas
Exactly. And there are players that just kind of picked it up and enjoyed it and liked it in the same way that we liked it. I think maybe it was more onboarding and how we introduce players to these systems. And how do we teach you the game in general?
Steacy
That's a really good one. And it's such a challenge. I mean, they've done studies and humans, when they've learned something, they immediately forget what it's like to not know that thing. You need new players to really know how you're evolving your new player experience.
Tomas
And there are lots of cases where, in the tutorial, we force you to push that button and do the thing. And then you watch multitudes of streams, and you see them not using that feature or that button. And frustration quickly turns to the question - what are we doing wrong on our end? Why haven't we taught this correctly? Whatâs the learning here? Clearly we haven't done our job in that sense of like, bringing you into the game with all of this ready in your mind.
Steacy
It's the only entertainment product where you have to teach someone a whole new set of skills every time, which I think is a fun challenge. But it is a challenge.
Tomas
That's an interesting point. There's no tutorial for movies.
Tomas
Not to go back to the last Q&A too much again, but there are plenty of references for Roguelites. And there are plenty, plenty of references for open world games, but there weren't that many for Roguelites in an open world. So I think there's an increased difficulty curve, and how do you tutorials for this stuff? That is part of the challenge, which is again, also what's fun and cool about it for us.
Are there any big features or pain points we want to address in the near future that we're ready to talk about?
One of the things that we're looking at now is permanent progression, and I think permanent progression is something that was identified by the community and by us, too, but I think it actually started with the community. The argument is really, at its base, that Roguelites have permanent progression. And I think we've all felt that's actually absolutely true. And we felt we had a take on permanent progression. But we also agree that it's not really there yet.
I think our permanent progression was a little bit academic. We're currently looking at making moves in a stronger direction for permanent progression. Having said that, these are design meetings that are currently happening, I imagine they're happening as we speak, so the exact details of any changes are not really ready. But a lot of the things that we've talked about - what I heard from the designers,and so on - it looks really good. It looks really cool. And I think that's gonna do a lot for the game, adding that experience of feeling like your death is its own kind of reward, in a sense, as it should be.
Do we have any plans for that OST as a separate release?
Steacy
Yes. I love this question. I also love the soundtrack. And I appreciate that you don't want us to just hoard it to ourselves forever. So yes, we are talking to the fabulous composers at TwoFeathers who did the soundtrack about exactly this - what would be the nicest way to make this available? So stay tuned.
End
Weâre really enjoying these community hangouts, and we hope you are too. Make sure to join the Discord server if youâd like to interact with us on a daily basis and get notifications for other developer content and events.
Live developer Q&A - 17th May 2023
We're welcoming two new guests to the live developer Q&A over on the Discord server.
đď¸ Our guests this week are Trevor (Sound Designer), and Jonas (Animator).
đď¸ The event will happen on Wednesday, 17th May at 15:00 CET!
đ Drop any questions you have in the replies, or head over to the #â questions channel in the server
Ravenbound's soundtrack and sound design have gathered quite a few fans, and those who remember our launch stream on Twitch will know that Jonas is excellent at the game's combat. It'll be a fun chance to hang out with the devs, but in case you miss the event, it will be recorded and transcribed to be shared with you later.
We hope to see you there!
Dev Q&A 2: Summary & Highlights
Do join us on Discord if you have any questions youâd like answered or if you want notifications for future events!
If you'd like to listen to the full recording instead, click here.
Whatâs your win rate for Elites and Wardens in Ravenbound?
Simon: On the first difficulty, I expect to clear most Wardens. As for Tier 2 Hatred, the first Warden is usually fine, but I probably die on the second and third Warden the most.
Emil: I play a lot, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm good. Usually, I make it to the third Warden.
What was the first project you worked on?
Simon: My first official game work started at Avalanche Studios Group during the end of the production stage for Rage 2.
Emil: My first project was Just Cause 2, which I joined as a dialogue coordinator. I did things like coordinating line recordings and some localization stuff.
In this patch, we've added 111 smaller Raven towers, with the aim of reducing downtime between camps and exploration. Do either of you have any additional insight you'd like to give to the Raven Towers?
Simon: We've tested a bunch of different methods for how to change up between flight and ground play. For a long time, you could become a bird at any point. The issue with that was that youâd lose the sense of scale of the world and it almost became like selecting points on a 2D map, which is not what we're going for. After testing different variants, we landed on what we have today with the towers. I'm quite happy with that, but we want to improve the downtime you're experiencing; we want more things to do when going to these towers and for the world to feel like it's appropriately made for that experience.
Emil: As mentioned, we've tried a bunch of different things and tested them out throughout development to various degrees of success. This latest version that we have is the one that's worked the best. I remember one version we tried; you ran out of "bird juice" as you flew. Although you could find more in the world, it just ended up being this crazy race to find a top-up before your âjuiceâ ran out. Sometimes it would run out while you were above the ocean, so it didn't work out well.
Is there a plan for co-op or multiplayer in the future?
We've addressed this a couple of times, and we want to reiterate that currently, the only plans for Ravenbound are in a single-player capacity. Ravenbound is really focused on being a single-player experience.
The new patch introduces adjustments to the Hatred system. Previously, enemies received a 5% boost per Hatred card to their health and damage. Now we've changed this value to a Level, which is a base value that can be changed per enemy.
Also, you will no longer absorb a Hatred fragment when opening chests. Instead, whenever you open a chest with Hatred, you'll find that one of the three cards you pull from that chest will be a Hatred card. Those are new items that weâre introducing â each Hatred card has a different effect.
The aim is to make Hatred less punishing and introduce more variety to the mechanic.
Simon: The reason for this change is that it was causing unintentional scaling behaviour, for example, making one enemy become too tanky. Introducing five more health for one of our Utlagi enemies is not a big deal, but, doing it on a boss is, of course, a huge deal. So, now weâre able to balance them individually and the power increase shouldnât feel as jarring.
Emil: I think there is more of a risk/reward element. And also, every time you get a Hatred card you also get two other cards. You get something for the risk you take.
My favourite aspect of these changes is that Hatred chests no longer lock up fragment slots. Previously, when you played, you could get into a situation where you found a good chest, but if your fragments were locked, you couldnât open it. But now, you can always open chests. There's still a risk to any chest with Hatred, but the risk is much smaller and more interesting.
Simon: We've also made some changes to the graves. Now, the region you select will have four graves, and the first grave you find is the only one you get, so you don't see the others. That grave wonât have any Hatred on it, youâre free to interact with it without any drawback. Then, when you select a new region, you get one more grave. The graves were one of the biggest RNG cases since you don't know what the other person had in their inventory, and now thereâs going to be a little bit more loot available to players.
Emil: When there was Hatred associated with the graves, we found that a lot of people opted out. But we want you to have fun with them, as you can find something that you technically haven't unlocked yet.
Simon: Hopefully, this take is gonna make Hatred feel like it's a little less punishing. We are super interested to see how people react to this.
Is there anything else that either of you want to talk about on the Hatred changes for this patch?
Hatred has been a struggle for both the community, and us in development â we need players to keep moving forward because that's the nature of roguelite; we want to give you a different type of openness and agency in how you choose to do that.
We tried one solution where, after a certain increase in progression, you were locked into an enemy fight. And after progressing some more, thereâd be an even harder fight, there's high risk involved and that risk gets higher the more you want to progress. We also talked about having a timer, for instance, but you'd probably feel bad if you ran out of time just as you were about to open the tomb gates. Anyway, we're super keen on seeing what you make of the recent changes.
How was the overworld of Ravenbound created? Was it a collaboration between teams or was there one mastermind?
Emil: Was there one narrative mastermind? No, there were narrative masterminds, for sure. The whole process went through, as anything in the game, a bunch of iterations. I think I wrote the first version of the lore and that was completely scrapped, because it was terrible. Then people who actually know things came in and did a better job. It's something that was spread out across multiple disciplines.
When it comes to the lore and narrative, we had specific people. For example, our narrative designer, Josephine, wrote the narrative that you will consume in the game. For the actual world, though, when it came to the islandâs construction, David was our world designer; he created many worlds for the studio.
But the design of everything, in the end comes from the collaborative effort of making a game.
Simon:The studio has big teams making big games, like Mad Max. And then we have our smaller games like Ravenbound, and in my experience, thereâs much more collaboration on those small teams because it becomes so tight-knit, and you need to work together.
It's an exciting challenge, the world of Ravenbound is quite big, and there are only a few people on the team. So even though we have a lot of collaboration, quite often, there has been monumental amounts of effort put in by one individual. For example, David sculpted the entire world. But there's still that collaboration and input from the team.
Emil: That's what strikes me with Ravenbound. If you told another developer, âall these animations were made by one crazy animator. All the cards, and all the UI, yep, one person,â theyâd probably say, âOh, wow, that looks impossible.â
Whatâs your favourite biome?
Emil: I'm fond of Sushammar, the region without a tomb. There's something rugged about it.
Simon: Whenever I fly towards the fire region - Fornfjall - I'm always in awe. When I'm on the ground, it's Myrkskog - the dark forest at the centre of the island - I love the feeling of being there on the ground. It's dark, and it's a bit scary. Maybe youâll hear some creature screeching further away. I love that.
Emil: When you're flying out towards Livsveden - the autumn forest area - there is one path you take to the right of the mountains where you come upon these waterfalls. When the light hits right, it's just gorgeous.
One of my favourite parts of the world is behind one of those waterfalls. A few people reading this won't know where that is, so we'll let you discover that one for yourselves. And on that hint, thank you to Emil and Simon for joining us!
We're looking forward to being able to chat with Stacey next week, who's the product owner for Ravenbound. We'll be able to discuss many extra things that we haven't covered in the last couple of Q&As.
Please add any questions youâd like answered in the next Q&A in the replies or in #questions on our Discord server. Weâre aiming to do these Q&A's regularly and the next one will be May 11th, at 15:00 CET!
Patch 1.0.3 is now live!
Greetings Vessels,
Weâre excited to introduce some of the changes in this update, as they have been hot topics around the community.
One of the most prominent pieces of feedback weâve had from day 1 is that many of you feel the downtime between fighting a camp and returning to Raven form to continue traversing the map is too long. To help reduce this downtime, weâve added more Raven Towers around the map, particularly in areas where the existing towers were difficult to access (on top of a mountain, for example).
Weâve opted for this approach because it addresses the downtime concerns, while still giving us a very important period of ground traversal between camps. Through playing in the past, we've found that traversing part of the world on the ground is essential to provide a sense of scale to the world. This sense of scale is lost if the player has the option to transform back to Raven Form at any time, and itâs a key element to maintaining the open-world feel of Ravenbound.
These periods of ground traversal also give us the opportunity to introduce some fun exploration elements in parts of the map that may be overlooked when flying, and we want to keep options for these types of side adventures open as we continue to expand on the game.
We also want to give more clarity and direction for those who may just be starting their first run, so weâre introducing more quest objectives to guide players and show how the core game loop works. For example,there are now new objectives guiding players to collect mana and cleansed treasure chests. We hope that this will help new players become more familiar with the flow of Ravenbound. To improve even more on this clarity, weâre also adding more tooltips for mana, coin, and health to mention a few.
A series of adjustments are being introduced to the Hatred system. We teased this in our Dev Q&A on Discord last Thursday, but now we can tell you all about our improvements to Hatred. From now on, players will no longer absorb a temporary Hatred fragment when opening a chest with Hatred. Instead, one of the three available cards that pop up will be a Hatred card, and to add variety to this aspect, weâre introducing new Hatred cards â in general, these cards are less punishing. Furthermore, once a Warden has been defeated and players have received an Ellri blessing, all locked fragment slots will become unlocked instead of only one. In the same vein, weâve changed the way bosses and elites become empowered by Hatred â youâll find the full details below.
This is only an initial step weâve taken to strike a balance between the tough choices youâll make during a lifetime. It should also ensure exploration doesnât feel punishing, but rather, adds an extra element of strategy and choice to your runs.
Last but not least, this update includes a variety of quality of life improvements and bug fixes so please read on for the full scope!
Raven Towers
Weâve added 111 smaller Raven Towers with the aim of reducing the amount of downtime between enemy camps and exploration.
The new smaller Towers
Hatred System Adjustments
âYour feedback on the Hatred system has been heard, and we're working to strike a balance between tension and open-world freedom. To make the system less punishing, more intuitive, and enjoyable, this patch introduces some changes. Let's work together to optimize the Hatred system.â
Hatred is being changed in a number of ways. Firstly, weâve adjusted the way Bosses and Elites are empowered by Hatred.
Each enemy type will now have their own unique balance for how much health and damage increase they receive from a new base value we call the Hatred Level.
When a hatred card appears, your hatred level is raised.
Previously, enemies received a 5% boost per Hatred card, but now weâve now changed this value to Level 1 which is a base overall value for how many times Elites and Bosses have been empowered.
Additionally, once a Warden has been defeated and the Ellriâs blessing has been received, all locked fragment slots will now be cleared and reset from Hatred.
Player Graves have also been changed slightly â they no longer carry Hatred, and there will now only be one Grave per selected region, or in other words, one grave per Warden.
Finally, rather than absorbing a Hatred fragment whenever you open a chest with Hatred, now youâll find that one of the three cards that appear will be a Hatred card â which leads us to the introduction of the new Hatred cards. With these we aim to make Hatred less punishing, while introducing more variety to the mechanic.
[table equalcells="1"][tr][td]Hatred Card[/td][td]Effect[/td][/tr][tr][td]Mana Leech[/td][td]On Reveal: You lose 1 Mana[/td][/tr][tr][td]Vanishing Wealth[/td][td]On Reveal: You lose 50 Coin[/td][/tr][tr][td]Chains of Enfeeblement[/td][td]On Reveal: Lock a Relic Slot[/td][/tr][tr][td]Blunted Edge[/td][td]On Reveal: Decrease the original Weapon Damage of your currently equipped weapon by 10%[/td][/tr][tr][td]Mana Exhaust[/td][td]On Reveal: Increase the Mana Cost of all Cards in your Hand by 1[/td][/tr][tr][td]Chaotic Mana Exhaust[/td][td]On Reveal: Increase the Mana Cost of a random card in your hand by 3[/td][/tr][tr][td]Armor Erosion[/td][td]On Reveal: Decrease the Armor of your currently equipped armor by 3[/td][/tr][tr][td]Fragment Shatter[/td][td]On Reveal: Your Fragments are destroyed[/td][/tr][tr][td]Avaricious Trade[/td][td]On Reveal: Vendor Prices are increased by 20%[/td][/tr][/table]
Icons for the new Hatred cards
Additional Objectives and Markers
We want to give players, especially first time players, a smoother experience when first starting their journey in Ăvalt. There will now be additional objectives and markers in between the Tear of Hatred and the Warden in order to get you more familiar with the gameplay loop.
Additional objectives included collecting mana from the shattered pillar in the Tear of Hatred, and a prompt to open chests that were cleansed after the Tear was cleansed â these chests will be identifiable by a quest marker, and there will also be a quest tracker to empower a number of fragments.
Quality of Life Updates
Tooltips
Tooltips have been added with information about mana, coin, and health. An additional tooltip warning for Hatred will pop up once hatred has been increased 4 times, informing players that bosses are becoming stronger and that chests with Hatred should be avoided.
Hand screen Selection
The hand screen will now retain the last selected card once itâs reopened. It will also automatically select the card to the right after playing a card, if applicable.
Loot History Rework
The way our loot history system worked sometimes resulted in a high frequency of common cards showing up during draws. Weâve reworked the system to ensure that duplicate cards no longer appear in the same reward screen, while prioritizing older cards in the history when generating new loot. With this change, players should notice a more balanced distribution of cards.
Frozen Status
The status will no longer break attack chains, and when an enemy stops being Frozen they will continue their attack chains.
Bug Fixes
Some of the more notable bugs being patched in this update are issues leading to deleted save files, Vessels with two weapon traits, and a leftover red square issue. Your bug reports via Discord are incredibly helpful, so weâre highlighting reports weâve received via the community, as well as other issues we were already aware of. Please keep your reports coming as we work towards improving stability and keep on squashing bugs!
Crashes
- Resolved an issue where a crash would lead to saves being deleted*
Challenges & Legacy
- Resolved an issue where challenges for completing siphons sometimes would not progress*
- Resolved an issue where the Lore tablet on the island after new spawn didnât unlock in the Lore tab and also didnât grant Legacy when read*
- Fixed an issue where Legacy points for visiting multiple Ellri statues were not being granted immediately after finishing a lifetime
Cards
- Fixed the issue where some Gale cards are shown with the incorrect element in the cards collection*
- Fixed the issue where scrolling through the cards compendium via mouse wheel only worked while the cursor is hovering over a card*
- Fixed an issue caused by where cards that interact with the Spored debuff couldnât trigger consistently due to the duration of Spored being too short
- Fixed an issue where Gold Shackled Bottle consumed more coins than it was intended
- Resolved an issue where closing the hand screen during the "Play card" animation created a broken card when opening the hand screen again
Misc
- Fixed a bug where sometimes Vessels would get two weapon traits
- Fixed an issues where red squares would appear when players first enter the Siphon select area
- Fixed an issue where the all equipment in the Blacksmith shop cost 0
- Fixed an issue where starting over during the rift cleansing cutscene caused the player's character to stop responding to any input
- Resolved a problem where the game could be soft locked by button mashing
- Fixed issues in multiple camps where the enemies had trouble navigating
- Fixed Tomb selection gates so they don't trigger SFX when approaching from outside
*This indicates bugs that were directly reported by the community
Thank you all for the submitting bug reports, leaving comments on Steam forums and interacting in our Discord server! We can't wait to read your feedback as we continue to work on Ravenbound.
Make sure to join our Discord community where you can discuss strategy with other Vessels, report issues directly to the QA team and get notifications for our next dev Q&A.
See you in Ăvalt.